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Ecommerce Success hits 50 subscribers

ecommerce-success-by-ad360-youtube-channel-hits-50-subscribers
The "Ecommerce Success by Ad360" YouTube channel hits 50 subscribers


The “Ecommerce Success by Ad360” YouTube channel hits 50 subscribers!

Today we’re celebrating an important milestone for our YouTube channel.

“Ecommerce Success by Ad360” is a YouTube channel where we share tips, news, best practices to help business owners be happy, productive, and successful!

We make daily videos reviewing ecommerce businesses websites, giving them tips and advice to improve their conversions and better their marketing, advertising.

Making merchants happy and successful

Ad360’s mission is to make millions of merchants happy and successful. We take care of all your promotional activities, allowing you to focus on your passion & core business.

These videos are an important way for us to provide value, free advice and free website reviews to business owners. Our goal is to be informative, educational, while being useful as the same time, providing actional tips that e-commerce business owners can take home and implement right away.

We cover a variety of topics and discuss all things e-commerce, advertising, marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), conversion rate optimization (CRO), website design, branding, retargeting, social media, communication, and many other themes that could help businesses be more successful.


Sample Topics covered

Here are a few examples of videos we’ve made, to give you an overview of what you can learn from the YouTube channel:

Advertising

How much to spend on ads before you get sales
In this video we discuss about a business question on Reddit about how much they need to spend on ads before they get enough results to draw a conclusion.
https://youtu.be/4GZVrQU81RE

Money losing ad! What to do?
In the video, we’re discussing a few of the common advertising Key Performing Indicators (KPI) such as CPM, CPC, CTR. We’re giving a few tips to a Reddit post author to help them improve their ad results.
https://youtu.be/uM6TxGK9aNM

Homepage VS Product page? Which destination is best for advertising?
This video examines whether businesses should use their Homepage or Product page as a destination for their ads. We explain pros and cons of both, and why the best solution might be something else: a dedicated landing page. If you don’t know what this is, this video will go over the theory of why a landing page will outperform homepages and product pages.
https://youtu.be/aAyC2_7EseU

Marketing

3 marketing techniques to increase revenue
Successful companies like Apple or Netflix use these marketing rechniques all the time to increase their average order value (AOV) and sales: Value/pricing ladder, Price anchoring, Compromise effect.
https://youtu.be/loZtTmK5tps

Convert more by assuming your customer knows nothing
In the video, we’re discussing a few of the common advertising Key The concept of the “5 Levels of Awareness” by genius marketer Eugene Schwartz can really help you understand how to make your website better for the majority of your visitors, which will increase conversions.
https://youtu.be/g7w6h4KIDP0

Clueless about Website Traffic Generation
This video responds to a user on Reddit, asking for help with Website Traffic Generation. We cover different methods to generate traffic and how they can apply these to help their business grow: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Influencer Marketing, Advertising.
https://youtu.be/YiKaNWPU834


Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Introduction to the concept of SEO and how to get your website crawled, indexed, and delivered as a response to users’ queries on Google (and other search engines!).
https://youtu.be/yjoIgfjBYkg

Words Matter! Boost sales with descriptions!
Why Google still advises in 2022 website oweners to use more texts to improve your website’s content and make your pages more discovarable as search queries results.
https://youtu.be/IwzDRjBW7dA

New factors to rank on Google – Desktop page experience search signals
What are the new Core Web Vitals and other page experience signals that are now used by Google as a factor to determine how to rank pages for Desktop searches.
https://youtu.be/a2doaoYTTyY



Website Design

How to generate trust to increase e-commerce sales
This video reviews a website shared on Reddit and gives several general tips you can use to improve the website structure, design, content to improve conversion rates.
https://youtu.be/T7nGgTts5pY

Don’t lose customers because of colors
Colors can be a tricky topic because they can be seen as a matter of personal taste. However, there are design guidelines for accessibility and some colors combinations are more efficient than others. If you’re foreign to color theory, we share in this video a free online tool that can help you pick better color combinations in just a few minutes.
https://youtu.be/MzpUUF04exQ

Make your Ecommerce Website Stand Out
Standing out is key in a market where “10,000 alternatives to buy from are but a click away”. Hopefully, this video helps illustrate this key concept and gives a few practical tips about what can be done to make your website feel different, and convert more.
https://youtu.be/gtiDZYXu_Dc



Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

How to boost by up to 232% conversions by fixing CTAs
This video gives a few tips to this store owner to increase conversion rates by fixing the Call to Actions (CTA) buttons.
https://youtu.be/4HIov1ksii4

Why 75% of visitors abandon their carts
In this video we’re reviewing two studies about e-commerce statistics such as the cart abandonment rates, add to cart rates, conversion rates and average order values. Knowing key e-commerce statistics is important to gauge whether your business is doing fine or not, and which areas you need to focus on to improve your results.
https://youtu.be/aaLZoSsAEqk

85% Bounce Rate! How bad is it??
We give the definition of Bounce Rate and what the Google Analytics documentation teaches us about this topic. We also review a few tools that you can use to verify whether your website loads quickly, is responsive and mobile-friendly. These factors can impact bounce rate, as well as the ranking on Google, and are worth looking into.
https://youtu.be/cjn2Heyi460



Ad360 App Features Highlights

Public Release of Ad360 App for Shopify
This video announces that any Shopify user can install the Ad360 App for Shopify and grow their business with the easiest way to manage all promotional activities in one place.
https://youtu.be/-NX_bZcfXH8

What is Retargeting and why you must use it
In this video we’re talking about Retargeting, which is way too often overlooked by small businesses, whereas it is the most efficient form of advertising that you can do. Some studies say that Retargeting gets 1,300% Return on Investment (ROI). It’s definitely a big mistake not to employ it. Thankfully, we’re here to help you understand how to make the most of it, and get started with Retargeting thanks to Ad360!
https://youtu.be/YPr6V9rqPRg

Master hyper Local & Geo-targeted ads
We’re explaining why local-based ads are so important. We describe two advanced advertising techniques: Geotargeted ads & Hyperlocal ads. Both of these allow you to run ads that are personalized for specific areas, which will be more noticed and efficient to generate sales. Ad360 App for Shopify allows you to easily implement both of these techniques, in an easy way.
https://youtu.be/EIByOD0t9Cw



Get a free personalized review of your business


If you’d like help improving your website, and get a dedicated private call to review your e-commerce website, your marketing strategy and your advertising setup, feel free to book a consulting/audit call at any time on our website.

Categories
Growth Academy

Budgeting for Facebook Ad Success

Facebook-ads-budget
Budgeting for Facebook Ads Success

Introduction: A Dollar Spent, 10 Dollars Earned

Return on Ads Spent (ROAS) is a key metric for companies advertising online.  Businesses may have budgets of different sizes, but many of the core elements of running the campaign remain the same.

Successfully setting a daily Facebook ad budget, testing different ad sets, and engaging the target audience multiple times are all key to growing your Shopify sales.  A little marketing planning can go a long way here, so make sure to have a blueprint in place before you begin!

Setting a Daily Budget

First off, Facebook ads provides an option of setting a “daily” or “lifetime” budget – we’d opt for the daily budget while starting out.  It provides a chance for more flexibility as the promotional campaign developers.

An amazing feature of Facebook ads is that Shopify businesses do not have to “break the bank” to reach their audience – even $10/day is enough to have your ads be sent out across the 2.7 billion Facebook users!  If you consider yourself a “Small-to-Medium” sized store at the moment, aim for a daily budget between $10-30.  Your ads will be seen, and the data collected from their performance metrics will be invaluable in how you further develop the campaign.

Test Ad Sets before scaling up

When framing your Facebook ad campaign, remember it’s not just one ad banner you are sending out your entire audience!  Remember from our post on Facebook custom audiences that effective Facebook ad campaigns segment their audiences based on key factors (e.g. – demographics, location, interest).  For each custom Facebook audience, you likely will roll out a different “ad set.” 

Each ad set is specifically targeted to one of your custom audiences, and from there, you can try different versions of the ad as a form of A/B testing.  For example, you may have three ad sets prepped for three distinct custom audiences.  Within each ad set, you roll out two versions to see which one better drives engagement and boost traffic to your store!

Better to Reach an Audience of 100 10 times than 100,000 people Once

Finally, please note it’s better to concentrate your ad sets to smaller audiences you can reach multiple times, rather than blasting out a single ad to larger audiences.  Marketing research has shown that customers need to see your ads 7-8 times before they consider purchasing something from your store. 

Thus, it’s more efficient to have a small audience you show multiple ads to rather than a broad audience who briefly see your ads only once.  Facebook ads breaks up these factors into awareness, consideration, and conversion.  You may have also heard of concepts such as AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) that conceptualize how customers are funneled to drive sales to your store. As you scale up your ads, remember the average customer needs exposure to your store’s promotion multiple times.  Otherwise, your ROAS will suffer.

Conclusion: Who can Help Analyze my Facebook Ad Data?

After running a Facebook ad campaign, setting a daily budget, and releasing your various ad sets, it can feel confusing how to make sense of the data collected – that’s where Ad360 steps in!  We specialize in analyzing your customer data and subsequently optimizing future campaigns.  Better ads mean more sales, so please reach out to try a free demo by Ad360 today!

Categories
Growth Academy

3 marketing techniques to increase revenue

3 marketing techniques to increase revenue
Proven techniques used by Netflix and Apple used to increase revenue.

Welcome to Ecommerce Success by Ad360, the channel where we share tips, news, best practices to help business owners be happy, productive, and successful!

In today’s video, we’re reviewing a website shared on Reddit.

Firstly, they are doing a lot of things right! The website is beautiful, the content is great, the brand feels personal and relatable, and the products are beautiful!

In the video, we review the website, explaining how the business owner applied e-commerce website design best practices to make an efficient store.

Secondly, we review a free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool from Google to evaluate the page performance score. This matters increasingly as Google search engine results are now ranked partially based on the page experience (including loading speed).

Lastly, the video introduces 3 marketing concepts which are proven to increase revenue considerably, and which we believe could be hlpful for this website:

1/ Value & pricing ladder

2/ Price anchoring

3/ Compromise effect

Ssuccessful companies like Apple or Netflix use these marketing techniques to increase the average order value and their sales.

3 Marketing TECHNIQUES to INCREASE revenue

If you’d like us to do a more in-depth analysis of your advertising setup / targeting options / campaigns data, please book a free consulting call with Ad360’s team.

Categories
Growth Academy

Deal with Custom Audiences in Facebook

Custom Adueinces in Facebook Ads
Use Custom Audiences with Facebook Ads

Custom Audiences = Complexity Explosion

In our previous article reviewing the basics of Facebook Ads, we touched on the importance of building custom audiences with Facebook’s features. 

Age, gender, location, and Interests can all be modified for custom audiences… and… well… the sheer number of combinations that can be made from these factors alone is remarkably complex.  Even the term for its growing sophistication takes your head for a spin… combinatorial explosions.  Sheesh. 

But no worries – this blog post takes a deeper dive into the complexity that comes with building multi-factor custom audiences on Facebook.  While each essential for succeeding with a modest marketing budget on Facebook, so all Shopify business owners, take out a piece of paper and #2 pencil!  This analysis goes “all in” on the complexity of creating custom audiences for Facebook

Why Are Custom Audiences So Important for Facebook Ads?

The first point to note:  you need to build multiple custom audience combinations for marketing success on Facebook.  It’s a response to the sea of 2 billion users out there, being exposed to ad banner after ad banner as they scroll down their news feed. 

Think of it like this – if you had the time and resources to create a unique, tailor-made ad for each individual customer, sales would increase infinitely. So long as the data-gathering methods are clearly stated, consumers vastly prefer customized ads to overly generalized ones. Because you can create up to 500 custom audiences on Meta, we suggest taking full advantage of that by creating more custom audiences, not less.

Now, here’s where the concept of “combinatorial explosions” comes in – curating an individual ad for anything over a few customers is impossible.  That would mean creating a “custom audience” of one, potentially thousands of times over.  What if you are trying to reach a customer base of 50,000?

The Basics of Building Custom Facebook Audiences

After clicking “custom audience” on Facebook ad’s interface, there are four broad categories you can break the “audience factors” into:

Data source

Helps you target potential customers based on how they have engaged with your online store so far.  Have they visited the site already?  Specific web pages?  Have they spent a substantial amount of time browsing?  And are you pulling from web traffic, Facebook page engagement, Instagram, or some other data source?  Remember, these customers may be in varying stages of the “AIDA” framework (awareness, Interest, Desire, Action).  Therefore, breaking down your custom audience by analyzing their story through data points will inform how to further engage them to increase sales.

Demographics

Pretty straightforward – are you aiming for male, female, or nonbinary audiences?  What age brackets?  For example, if you are selling cheap vintage tees with a female cut, you are likely targeting women ages 16-35.  Overall, demographics are a key component of creating effective custom audiences that drive sales.

Location

Aiming to reach the entire USA is far more costly than trying to reach a single state or region.  So, make sure to tinker with different location settings based on your customer data.  If you cast too broad a net, you’ll dilute the ability to keep engaging with that customer base; it will become too cost-prohibitive.

Interests

This is where things get interesting.  Stacking and layering interests is key to creating target audiences.  As you narrow down and tailor each custom audience, you can add interests that create a fuller picture of the users you are trying to reach.  Most importantly, focus on the fact you can target individuals with “Interest A or Interest B,” as well as, “Interest A and also Interest B.”  Both serve very different functions, as explained below!

“Stacking” or “Layering Interests” – Be Specific as Possible to Increase Ad Effectiveness

Specificity is crucial to have your ads compete with larger-budget businesses.  For example, you could adjust the settings to advertise only to males 18-34 on the East Coast who have an expressed interest in sports or sports apparel

Even more, you can “stack” or “layer” interests to bring laser-precision to your custom audiences.  Using the example above, interest stacking could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel or have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages!

In contrast to “stacking,” interest layering more effectively narrows down your target audience. You could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel and also have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages!  Effectively “layering” interests for your custom audiences mean each ad creative will be tailor-made for different segments of your audience.  The more layers, the more precise the audience.  You can also exclude certain segments of these audiences to make the ad campaign’s target outreach even more efficient

Depending on the size of your business, the “sweet spot” may be anywhere from 50,000 to 1 million+  Just remember… the budget goes up the larger audience you have!  On modest marketing budgets, it’s better to reach an audience of 1,000 with multiple ads to drive engagement, rather than reach an audience of 100,000 just once.  The latter will be breezed over by users, driving no traffic nor sales to your store.

Conclusion: Deal Better with the Complexity of Custom Audiences thanks to Automated Software

Figuring out which custom audiences to create, based on which data sources, demographics, locations, and interests, becomes an exercise in compounding complexity.  There are hypothetically hundreds to thousands of effective custom audience combinations for your store, and knowing which ones optimize your store for sales success is a full time job, if even possible.

Therefore, we recommend deploying automated software provided by Ad360 to bring laser-precision to your custom audience curation for Faceboook Ads.  Not only do we specialize in analyzing user data for promotional campaigns, the time saved going through it yourself will be a massive burden lifted from your shoulders. 

Concluding, Ad360 offers a free demo to help optimize your Faceboook ads and custom audience curation. We’ll handle the complexity of combinatorial explosions for you 😊  Cheers, and happy selling!

Categories
Growth Academy

Boost your Shopify Store with Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads for Shopify
Boost your Shopify store sales thanks to Facebook Ads

Simple, Bold Strategies to Boost Sales with Facebook Ads

Introduction – Reach a Sea of Two Billion

While Gen Z may complain that Facebook is “lame” now, or “Meta” as we should be calling now, that is far from the truth when it comes to using Facebook Ad campaigns.  2 billion users is nothing to scoff at, and Facebook has built a remarkable ad platform to help Shopify business owners reach a wider target audience.

This blog post examines how Facebook ads are unique from Google Ads, as well as how targeting potential customers based on interests – rather than preferred keywords – could be the keystone to increasing your sales!

The Basics: Account Setup & Goals

First things first, you need a Facebook business account set up with an ad account in place.  Once you have Pixel (Facebook’s answer to Google Analytics) activated, connect your Shopify store!  You can do so by downloading the “Connect Meta” app on Shopify.

Next up, pick the “goal” of your ad.  If you were in the military, this would act as the primary objective – we’d recommend starting with “boosting traffic” or “conversions” to start, but Meta lists 11 different objectives here.  Depending on where you feel your target customers are in the “sales funnel,” you may want to simply bring awareness, get views, generate leads, or drive engagement.

Target Audiences: Time to Pick your Lane

Perhaps the most important decision for any ad campaign is designating your target audience.  Facebook allows you to segment customers into the following classifications:

1. Age

Self-explanatory.  Are you targeting the Gen Z or old folks?  Picking a specific age demographic usually helps your ad campaigns effectiveness and efficiency in driving sales.

2. Location

Again, straight-forward.  You can narrow down what region of the world you are placing your ads.  With Ad360’s software supporting your Facebook ad campaign, you can narrow down the search to a single city block!

3. Interests

This is where Facebook Ads can differ significantly in their function from Google ads.  Because Facebook collects profile data on all 2 billion+ users, setting customer interests can focus on their hobbies, interest categories, page likes, searchable keywords, Facebook usage, or online buying history. 

Pick hobbies listed on the Facebook Ad dashboard that align with your product (e.g. – a basketball player is targeted with Nike shoes ad).  Interests listed in their “Information about me” (e.g. – a fashion lover is targeted by a vintage clothing site) can also be important to consider when optimizing your ad placements for maximum sales growth!

“Stacking” or “Layering Interests” – Get as Specific as Possible to Increase Ad Effectiveness

Specificity is crucial to have your ads compete with larger-budget businesses.  For example, you could adjust the settings to advertise only to males 18-34 on the East Coast who have an expressed interest in sports or sports apparel

Even more, you can “stack” or “layer” interests to bring laser-precision to your custom audiences.  Using the example above, interest stacking could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel or have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages!

Interest Layering more effectively narrows down your target audience; it could set an audience that shows ads only to males 18-34 on the East Coast, who have an expressed interest in sports/sports apparel and also have liked the official NBA, NFL, MLB, or NHL Facebook pages! 

In short, effectively “layering” interests for your custom audiences mean each ad creative will be tailor-made for different segments of your audience.  The more layers, the more precise the audience.  You can also exclude certain segments of these audiences to make the ad campaign’s target outreach even more efficient.

Conclusion: What to Do if Facebook Ads Feels Too Technical or Overwhelming

In conclusion, there are a lot of moving variables that factor into your Facebook ad campaigns.  Straddling this granular level of detail over several social media platforms can definitely make your head spin.  If you feel you could use some support analyzing and bringing all your different ad channels under one roof, reach out for a free demo by Ad360 today!  We’ll make it our mission to optimize your next Facebook ad campaign for success 😊

Categories
Growth Academy

Google Ad Secrets for your Shopify Store

Google Ads for Shopify
Improve your results on Shopify with Google Ads

Introduction – Being “Seen” on Google Search

With 8.5 billion searches executed a day, Google Ads are a primary promotional tool for Shopify owners.  However, it’s not as easy as “1, 2 3,” to suddenly begin boosting traffic to your store and converting sales with Google ads.  In fact, a large majority of Shopify store owners express a certain level of discontent when trying to optimize their Google ads efforts. 

One even said, “It’s at the point where I would pay someone to do my Google Ad campaigns if they know what they are doing.”

… Well guess what!  This blog provides the 360° view on how to organize Google ad campaigns to maximized sales.  There is a way to compete with retail giants with Google ads, so long as you are razor sharp in establishing your target audience, network, and keyword phrases.  Read below to learn how to approach your Google ad campaigns for increased sales and Shopify success!

Basics of Setting up Google Ad Campaigns

To start, let’s establish that Google Shopping ads reach over a billion users, and 75% of shoppers regularly use Google products when browsing online.  While starting a Google Ad campaign does cost money upfront, it is a worthy investment if you can establish a strong marketing strategy beforehand. 

First, you need to establish a location and network – what region are you trying to reach with your ads?  The Entire USA?  A region like the West Coast?  A single state, city, or neighborhood?  Precision here will save you money, so make sure you know exactly who you want to reach

From there, Google has multiple networks to run ads on, but we’ll focus on search engine ads and Google Display ads to provide the basics.  Simply put, search engine ads are the “promoted results” that appear at the top of the page when users conduct a search.  With the right keywords, your products will be displayed right alongside giants like Wal Mart and Amazon.  That way, shoppers are exposed to your store, appearing as just a viable option as any!  The exposure from promoted search ads drive sales for Shopify stores, so they are worth considering.

The second major network are Google display ads, which appear as those little banners or sidebars that pop up while users search the web.  In other words, a potential customer may be looking up news or their favorite content from a Google search, and the display network is smart enough to follow them and, should you place a bid, display your ad across the internet for searches that originated with Google.  The Google Display Network reaches 90% of all internet users around the world so… yeah.  Worth checking out to increase your Shopify store sales 😊

Keywords, Keywords, KEYwords

It takes a bit of vision and research, but picking the right keywords for each ad campaign is a crucial step to optimizing their success.  Every business and niche product has a different set of keywords, but it’s best to ask, “What are most likely the words and phrases people type in when looking for a product like mine?”  Conduct market research from there to make sure you align your keywords with what likely customers type into the Google search bar.

Generating Quality Ad Banners

After conducting the necessary market research, it is time to tap into your inner graphic designer, and create a quality ad.  While they understand their product intimately, a lot of Shopify store owners struggle to make their brand stand out or “pop” off the page through ads.  Be aware that Ad360 provides instant ad banner generation with its software.  We extract the products and pricing directly from your Shopify store, providing over a dozen options to pick from.  That way, you can run effective A/B testing to see which banners best increase sales to your store!

Conclusion: Delegate Google Ad Campaigns to Free Up Time

Now, making sense of your store’s Google analytics readout can be quite a chore and very time-consuming.  Ad360 makes it our businesses to evaluate customer data & google analytics for you!

That way, you can focus on quality products and service, while we handle maximizing the Return on Ads Spent (ROAS) for your store.  If you are interested in delegating these Google Ad Campaigns, reach out for a free demo by Ad360 today!

Categories
Growth Academy

Make Sense of Bounce Rate To Boost Sales!

Bounce Rate
What is the Bounce Rate on your website?

Introduction – Bouncing Across the Web

When you browse the web, consider how quickly you can navigate to a page, decide in a fraction of a second, “Mmmm… no.”  Then, you repeat the same bouncy activity on a new site, hopping webpage to webpage until you finally find a landing page that catches your attention.

… What about all those pages you bounced through without a second thought??  What if your business ends up like that?!!?

That is why analyzing your online business’s bounce rate is so important!

This blog covers the basics of bounce rates, the percent of visitors who navigate from your site after seeing only one page.  We’ll cover how to frame your bounce rate among other key analytics, as well as marketing strategies to reduce the bounce rate.  Reduced bounce rate = increased sales, so it’s worth a quick look!

Bounce Rate: A “Bird’s Eye View” of Your Site Activity

It’s best to think of bounce rate as a general “top-down” web metric.  While bounce rates do not tell the whole story of your site, they do give an interesting perspective on how many folks click through your page without thinking twice. 

For optimizing your online store and increasing sales, it’s worth paying attention to a fundamental metric like bounce rate.  Just remember it is only one piece of the Google analytics puzzle, so there is hope for your business even if it currently has a high bounce rate!

Key Steps to Improve your Bounce Rate & Increase Sales

With that said, below are key steps you can take today to improve your bounce rate and boost customer sales.  Review to improve your online marketing savvy:

  • Page load time

Starting off with a straightforward one here – your webpages should take no longer than 2-3 seconds to load!  Why? Over half of visitors will bounce after a 3 second delay.

Run a quick test yourself on a device outside your network to see how quickly your site loads.  You may to compress site data, reduce site redirections, streamline Javascript/HTML  code, improve server infrastructure, or use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to help boost up your page load time.  User Google’s pagespeed tool linked here to check your load time!  Sometime as simple as reducing the size of images on a page can improve its speed, so make sure to check your page load time out!

  • “Let your webpages breathe”

Remember the example in the intro – browsing the web is usually a passive activity.  Your site must cater to the visitor, not the other way around.  If the webpage they land on is cluttered, they’ll say, “Oh geez, I don’t what I’m supposed to look at,” and move on. 

Thus, it’s best to break up your webpage info. Do not be afraid of having some blank space in between content!  In fact, it “lets the user up” to breath and gives them a second to process your site’s presentation.

  • Use heat map analytics to see exactly where visitors’ eyeballs are first drawn

Heat map analytics can be a useful tool for showing exactly where visitors are drawn to most on your webpage.  The heat map will “light up” orange/red, informing you where their eyes are first drawn to.  Knowing that key info helps you reconstruct the user experience from their point of view.  Doing so is a surefire way to increase your online sales!

  • Cut down on excessive widgets and sidebars

Having key widgets or sidebars helps bring a helpful dynamic element to your site.  However, some businesses use them to the point it overtakes and distracts from the actual content!  Moreover, added sidebars could also contain Javascript or HTML errors that cause issues for users. Tactfully employ widgets, as they will potentially sap your customer’s attention away from placing an order.

  • Give each webpage a central focus that funnels visitors to a sales deal

Help visitors keep their eye on the prize!  Each webpage should contain a healthy balance of content and “call to action” buttons that funnel them along to the checkout page.  In other words, make sure each webpage brings it back to your “bread and butter” for increasing sales.

  • Clear, easy search bar that covers all your pages

The best-performing websites have an easy-to-use, fluid search bar that searches all content within the site.  Think of it like constructing a “Mini-Google” that helps visitors sift through all the products and pages you have available!  The quick the search bar loads as the user types, the more likely they are to purchase products and boost your sales.

  • Optimize mobile versions of your online store for increased sales

Some Shopify owners think they are all set after setting up a “desktop” version of their site… but remember we live in the Instagram Era.  You neeeeeeeeed to craft a mobile-friendly version of your store that effectively condenses your webpages down to a phone screen.  This is why successful businesses research creating a separate “app version” of their product.  They want to streamline the mobile user experience to boost their sales!


Conclusion – Ad360 is Here to Help Reduce your Bounce Rate!

If you feel implementing any of the above-mentioned ideas sounds too time-consuming, reach out to try a free demo at Ad360 today!  We offer a free evaluation of your website’s metrics, providing concrete, actionable marketing solutions for your site.  That way, you can be happy, productive, and successful while you increase your sales online 😊 Cheers, we hope that you enjoyed this breakdown of bounce rates!

Categories
Growth Academy

Starting with $0 and 1 product on Shopify

Several persons recently asked us what Shopify themes they should be using and how much it would cost them.

In particular, one person was wondering which theme would suit well a single product store.

The great news is that Shopify has a wonderful Theme store, with themes of all kinds. Regardless of your industry, product, or type of business, we’re sure you’ll find several that you’ll like 🙂

There are nice themes for all sorts of tastes, with varied aspects and designs. Some themes need to be purchased for a once-off fee, but there are Free themes available as well!

In particular, there are 6 great free themes that use the latest architecture called v2.0 Online Store themes. These 6 themes are definitely a great place to start!

In addition to being beautiful and performant, the v2.0 Online Stores by Shopify are very flexible and adaptable, making them good choices for single product websites. Indeed, you want to compensate for the lack of collections by adding more info and context around your brand and product benefits. 

In the video below, we’re reviewing the Dawn, Taste, and Sense themes with the angle of how to adapt them for a single product website and we’re showing at the end of the video a concrete example of a great single product website.

Starting on Shopify with $0 and 1 product – using Themes v2.0

If you’d like help setting up a store, or want a more in-depth analysis of your advertising setup / targeting options / campaigns data, feel free to book a call with Ad360!

Categories
Growth Academy

4 Keys to Unlocking SEO on Shopify

SEO for Shopify
SEO tips for Shopify e-commerce stores

And why it’s VITAL for Sales Growth!

In part III of our “Search Engine Optimization” series (part I and II linked here), we distill the top 4 “keys” to boosting sales with SEO.  Here, you’ll find the breakdown of actions you could take today to increase your store’s visibility on search engines like Google – and they aren’t complicated!  SEO may not be rocket science, but it does take strategic, effective marketing strategies on your part.

Read below for the 360 degree, step-by-step guide to learn the practical application of SEO strategy!

1.      Favicon design

Favicons are those little picture designs that appear in the corner of your website tab. Some popular ones are the multicolored “G” when on Google or the red “play button” icon on Youtube. 

These little guys may seem unimportant, but they carry a lot of weight for SEO ranking!  Simply put, they provide brand awareness, credibility, and customers an easier way to recognize your site.  Even if you have incredible goods in your store and provide top-notch service, customers subconsciously judge you right away if you don’t have a favicon like other sites. 

Picture a dilapidated, old storefront – looks like a tornado just hit it.  Even if the goods inside are amazing, and the store owner is a peach of a guy, chances are you won’t go in!  It looks too worn-down on the outside. You make a snap judgement to move on. 

That’s exactly what will happen to your store without a favicon!  Get one designed asap to increase sales to your Shopify store.

2.      Descriptive heading tags for well-organized site categories

We’ve mentioned in an earlier article the importance of descriptive heading tags to better organize your site’s web pages. Here’s why that is so essential.  Not only do users feel better browsing, Google’s “crawl” software won’t get confused indexing your site.  The clearer the web page headings and the better classification of your info, the more SEO-friendly Google will consider your site… and you will be rewarded with a better ranking 😊

Sometimes, these headings are referred to as “H tags.” Make sure to keep your ducks in a row when building the content on each page.  It should always start with a clear, descriptive, but not-too-wordy title!  That’s a major key to growing your Shopify sales.

3.       Detail meta and product descriptions

On top of good headings, remember that breaking up your info with easy-to-read product descriptions is essential for SEO best practices.  If you have any product listed on your site unaccompanied by at least a few lines of descriptive text, you are doing your online business a disservice!

Make sure you remember that new potential customers browsing your site (as well as Google’s web crawlers), are not experts on your industry like you.  If you can find a way to give them good information, segmented into different tabs on the product description, you give yourself the best chance to land on the first page in Google rankings. 

4.      Research backlinks through Google Search Console

This final key may be the most difficult to implement, as it involves some pretty serious market research: backlinks.  Backlinks are essentially hyperlinks that connect your site to another.  Consider when you look for, say, a new toaster online.  You find a site that lists the “top 10 toasters,” and there are hyperlinks leading to each option – those businesses successfully have been “backlinked,” linking them to more web pages across the web and increasing their visibility.

Now, when starting off green, finding the right sites to reach out to for a backlinks “shoutout” can seem pretty daunting.  So, we recommend starting by checking out Google Search Consoles information on backlinks here.   Make sure to check out what backlinks competitors have, and from there, you can begin your own marketing campaigns to increase the number of affiliate sites that offer a “backlink” to your Shopify store.  More quality backlinks, more sales for your Shopify store 😊

If you feel you would benefit from some SEO expertise to set up your store for success, reach out to try a free demo from Ad360 today!  We can provide a free consultation to evaluate how effective your SEO practices are, and what we can do to bring you up the Google ranks 😊  Cheers, we hope you enjoyed the 4 keys to SEO success!

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Growth Academy

The Importance Texts for Customer Growth

Text Descriptions for SEO
Texts are a major component of SEO

Focus on Textual Descriptions for Search Engine Optimization

Business owners agree there is an element of excitement in designing a brand-new Shopify site!  They can pour their passions into the web page’s presentation, and digital advances have made it as simple as “cut & paste” to add all kinds of dynamic elements to the site: pictures, slideshows, videos, and interesting graphics that “pop” off the screen. 

Be aware that, without a couple lines of descriptive text, audio-visual elements go completely unnoticed by search engines like Google.  They won’t “pick up” what your store is putting down!!

We’ve mentioned in a previous blog on SEO (link here) that Google’s “web crawling” software, vital for a website’s ranking, does not do a very good job analyzing the “purpose and place” of pictures and videos.  Every time you leave you, say, a picture of your product, without a meaningful textual description, it will be missed by Google’s ranking software, and your website’s visibility will suffer.

Breaking Down Where & When to Add Text on Your Site

To keep it simple, Ad360 wants to provide a 360° view on the most important places to add text for boosting sales.  That way, business owners can quickly spot where they need to add full text descriptors to make their site more Google-friendly.  We know that can sound silly, but strategically placing text descriptions gives you the best chance to be on the coveted “first page” of Google search results.

i.                    Meta text

You know those little “preview” descriptions that pop up when you search something up on Google?  That is meta-text, a tagged part of your webpage that Google recognizes as providing a good “glimpse” of what your web page offers users.  

ii.                  Webpage Titles

It may seem redundant while you type them out, but every web page users click through should have clear titles and subtitles.  Even if it looks a bit silly to you, users who have never browsed the site – and Google’s “web crawling” software – will greatly appreciate the clarity!

iii.                Product Descriptions

We at Ad360 are always a little shocked how many visually-stunning sites we come across… that totally blow off product tags and product descriptions.  We would highly recommend having at least one sentence – like a caption – for every product preview, and then full descriptive text when the user clicks through to view the product in closer detail.  

For example, if selling a gold bracelet, the caption with the product picture could read, “24 carat gold bracelet, sourced from ethical vendors and made with adjustable links for all wrist sizes.”  When the user clicks through to view the product, give them a novel!  It is best to break the text up into tabs, but those full text descriptions to accompany your pictures and products will boost GEO rankings and grow sales far more efficiently.

iv.                     Branding Descriptors

Marketing research makes clear that, with the seemingly endless commerce options available to online customers, it pays to include descriptive text that “fills in the human picture” of who you are as a business, what you stand for, and the values you hold dear.  As an example, having a strong “About Me” text page correlates to increased sales, as does stating how your store supports its core values.  Are you an animal lover?  Have a page where customers can make a donation to your chosen charity.  Text elements that give a fuller picture of your brand’s core values go a long way in customers positively identifying with you!

V.                     Reviews

Make a page that lists your favorite reviews!  It adds more dynamic text to your site and provides a sense of “social validation” that new customers, who, after reading a few positive reviews, feel they are making a good decision 

It’s Ok Ramble – Lean Toward More Textual Description, Not Less

Here is the main takeaway: any picture, video, link,  or product should come with full descriptive text, so both customers and google crawling software can make sense of your website!  Always lean toward “more full description,” not less.  If it starts to feel a bit redundant or like you’re rambling, that’s ok!  Google’s “web crawling” software will reward you with a higher ranking and more traffic to your online store.  You can edit down the parts that confuse customers, but remember – you are structuring your site for optimized web success! If you feel unsure about your current text descriptions or feel like professional guidance may give your online store a lift, reach out and try a free demo from Ad360 today!  We provide a free 30 minute consultation that can evaluate your current text descriptions, pointing out where improvements can be made for optimal sales success 😊